Daily Times

KATHMANDU: The extremely vitiated discourse propagated by the broadcast media in India and Pakistan has been acting as a spoiler for efforts to improve relations between the two countries, which demands the provision of an alternative media platform that dilutes the negative effect of the traditional media.

This came as a strong proposal in a recent meeting of experts and strategists from Pakistan and India held in Kathmandu as part of the Track-II initiative of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), a German foundation.

The participants of the meeting discussed at length the possibility of creating such a platform that would allow the free flow of information from both the countries about their people, cultures and aspirations that would not only help both nations view each other through a softer prism but also create a demand and an enabling environment for confidence-building and conflict-resolution measures whenever the states make a decision to pursue it.

It was however, emphasised that the current situation of escalation of tensions between both the countries was not an appropriate moment to start it at a larger scale, but some “baby steps” could be taken using the digital medium to begin with. The participants agreed to make this alternative platform covering politically neutral and purely entertainment-based content.

Manish Tewari, spokesperson for the Indian National Congress and former minister for information and broadcasting under India’s UPA government, while speaking on the occasion said that this proposed platform should not only create a common media market in Pakistan and India but in the whole of South Asia, whereby there was a free flow of information, a regulatory regime that allowed fast-track downlinking of each other’s television channels, free movement of books, and even a possibility of investment in each other’s private broadcast media, like FM radio space. “The potential of such an initiative is endless,” he said.

Gen (r) Masood Aslam said that the possibility of revenue generation if media on either side starts seeing the revenue potential would possibly help in mitigating the somewhat corrosive discourse that had been dominating the traditional mainstream media for the last couple of years. It would automatically create an appetite for a common media market, he added.

The Pakistani participants said that looking at the ratings that the Indian content brings, it was clear that there was a huge demand of Indian entertainment content in Pakistan. Similarly, the Indian participants informed that the Zindagi channel that aired popular Pakistani drama serials made many Pakistani actors household names in India because of the unprecedented popularity of those dramas.

The participants were of the view that this kind of joint media platform could begin as a low key digital project on a subscription-based Netflix-like cyber site, which – if made a financially viable concern – could, in the longer run, generate interest among the media investors who could then replicate it in order to explore a common media market.

This would, the participants agreed, bring a transformational change in the way both nations viewed each other, as well as create an almost irreversible environment where both the states could freely make appropriate policy choices towards peace and conflict resolution.

Some participants, however, were of the view that any such initiative should be limited to the entertainment based on shared culture and heritage and must not touch the contentious political and strategic issues. They also pressed for the placement of journalists in each other’s countries and resuming the exchange of newspapers and publications. They were of the view that both the countries should, as a confidence-building measure, resume downlinking of the state TV channels, the Door Darshan and the PTV news and entertainment channels.

The participants from both the countries included General (r) Ashok Mehta, Manvindar Singh, Manish Tewari, Shanthie Mariet D’Souza, Srinath Raghavan, Sushant Singh and Sanjay from India and Aziz A Khan, General (r) Hamid Khan, General (r) Masood Aslam, Benazir Shah, Ghareeda Farooqi and Amir Rana.